The Connecticut Department of Veteran Affairs didn’t properly monitor whether employees approved for telework were actually in the office or working from home, according to a report from the state auditors, which also found faulty overtime approvals and lax oversight of overtime approvals.
According to the audit report, DVA employees are required to sign into their shifts using a Kronos system and indicate whether they are working in the office or from home, but the audit found the department didn’t properly monitor whether employees adhered to their telework agreements.
The auditors reviewed Kronos data for ten employees who had either routine or situational telework agreements with the DVA and found that “The Department could not provide support that seven employees worked in the office for 110 full or partial days,” and “Two employees recorded regular hours for nine days when they teleworked.”
“The department does not have a formal process to document supervisory approval of employees’ occasional changes in telework days,” the auditors wrote. “By not complying with the department’s policies and the state’s telework agreement, there is risk employees may not be working on site as reported, resulting in potential inefficiencies.”
Under the state’s telework agreement, employees can be approved to work from home for any number of workdays following an agreement between state employee unions and Gov. Ned Lamont’s administration during the COVID-19 pandemic and a subsequent arbitration decision that cemented the policy.
Under the arbitration decision, unionized employees can only protest a telework determination that requires them to report to the office more than one day per week, but employees can be approved to work from home full-time, resulting in some employees being able to work from other states, sometimes as far away as Florida, according to a review by Inside Investigator.
An investigation into employee discipline at the DVA found that one former director was ousted by the department and investigated by the Office of State Ethics after they claimed he was using his one telework day per week to work at a second job. The former director vigorously denied those allegations and claimed that other employees were abusing family and medical leave time to work other jobs.
The DVA responded to the auditors, claiming it has updated its Kronos policy “to require employees who are teleworking to indicate telework in Kronos whenever the employee is teleworking, including full or partial days,” and that, “any telework that is outside of regularly scheduled telework must be approved and recorded by email between the employee and the manager or designee.”
The audit also determined the department had lax oversight of overtime and compensatory time approvals, lacking the required documentation for both. According to the audit, employees were filling out the wrong forms for overtime approval and supervisors were approving them anyway.
“The employees used the DVA Employee Time Request Form used to request paid leave rather than the DVA Overtime/Compensatory Time Approval Form. As a result, the department did not adequately document whether the overtime hours requests were properly approved, accurately calculated, or appropriately recorded,” the audit states. “The use of incorrect forms and delays in supervisory approval appears to be the result of a lack of management oversight.”
The audit, which was for the years 2022 and 2023, noted the DVA’s overtime expenditures were roughly $1.8 and $1.7 million, respectively. Since that time, DVA’s overtime costs have increased to $2.2 million at the end of fiscal year 2025.
The DVA agreed with the auditor’s findings and indicated the department had updated its policies and “provided training on the proper procedures to all managers.”
“We have revised our Overtime Request form to ensure that all approvals are documented on the form prior to overtime being incurred except in cases of emergent or urgent matters where there is not sufficient time to obtain prior written approval,” the department responded. “Lastly, managers or their designees must submit a copy of the approval to the DVA Payroll Office no later than the last day of the pay period in which the Overtime occurred.”
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